


Toothbrush

by wildechilde17



Series: Neville [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Love Confessions, Post-Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 14:43:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4309158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildechilde17/pseuds/wildechilde17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry never really paid much attention but whenever there was Luna there was Neville. We last saw them sitting battered and bruised on the stairs. With my best attempt at melding the movieverse with the bookworld this is what may have happened next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A toothbrush

**Author's Note:**

> This has been posted at Fanfiction.net for a while now but I thought I ought to brig over all my writing so here you go... toothbrush the first fanfic I ever wrote. Has been edited a little in the move.

He remembered, oh, it must have been years ago now or perhaps it only felt that way, he remembered being woken the night, after DA had tired him out, by Ron and Harry climbing into their beds. Half-awake he'd not really paid much attention to Ron's muttering to Harry.

"I still reckon Hermione's wrong, mate, she can't feel all that at once, you'd explode."

Harry had made that non-committal noise that Neville had always assumed meant Harry knew that Hermione was right but really wasn't interested in getting into it with his hot headed friend. Hermione was very rarely wrong anyway.

"And I don't have the emotional range of a tea spoon!" There was a definite pout to that, Neville noted before he had fallen back to sleep.

Neville snorted at that a little even now. Perhaps if Ron had spent more effort examining his own emotions then he wouldn't have taken so long to realise how well he fit with Hermione after all.

Hermione was very rarely wrong.

His whole body ached, his left ankle was still puffy from weeks back and that awkward dive he made into the room of requirement before the Carrows could grab him, when he raised his eyebrow there was something a little sharp and a little damp that he didn't like the feel of and he was certain he'd done something to his shoulder when he had swung at that, Merlin forbid, giant arsed snake. Even with the physical exhaustion he kept getting flashes, flashes of over whelming emotion. Bellatrix Lestrange was dead there was a kind of joy in it, but also a kind of loss in it too for so long the hate he felt for her had made him want to fight, with that bitch dead would he be able to continue? But Voldemort was dead and crumpled in a heap at Harry's feet so there was no need to fight or be brave any longer surely. Was it wrong for him to suddenly feel like he'd miss everyone cramped up in the room together plotting and working so hard for each other, he'd really had friends there despite the torture of it all. And why did he suddenly feel so embarrassed that he'd wanted to cower when all those death eaters had laughed at his name. Merlin, he should get up and do something, anything to stop the tidal waves of strange thoughts threatening to drown him.

The sword was still lying next to him. The Sword of Gryffindor. And for a moment he didn't second guess the swelling incoming wave of pride.

Something blue and purple and smudged with blood and dirt moved on to the step next to him.

Luna.

It was dawn he realised and he was really supposed to be dead by now.

But Gryffindor's sword was lying between them and perhaps you don't need to be fighting evil to be brave.

So he smiled a little and she in her calm, implacable manner smiled back.

It was all he could manage for the moment but she would know that, for all her strangeness Luna had always known.

There would be time to talk about how she had been his first and only best friend and how very lucky he felt to have fallen in love with his best friend. And then he could talk about how terrifying it was to start the DA again. But that with Ginny all instinct and fire and her, such knowing and grace, he'd felt he'd follow them anywhere. He could talk about how they'd left him one by one and he kept fighting so that he could pretend they were still there.

Or maybe he wouldn't need to say any of it. Maybe after he'd found some food and a toothbrush, definitely a toothbrush, he could just kiss her.

After all he was supposed to be dead by now and he was a man with a rather large sword.

Quietly, beside him, she sighed thoughtfully and with a little start he noticed that the pleasing warmth of her body seemed to have stopped the flashes for now. Ron had been wrong you wouldn't explode with so many feelings but sometimes, if you were very lucky, one feeling could damn well cut the head off all of the others.

Screw the toothbrush.

"I've always wondered what the Room of Requirement would look like if you required nothing," she said in that curious lilt that could not have come from a hill a mile or two from where Ron had grown up.

"I…" Neville stopped he had an unnatural sense that now was not the time for the logical response that the room only appears when required. Perhaps after years of knowing her, he was finally realising that sometimes she was just giving you a way of beginning the conversation. He grinned, an action that made the very sides of his face want to curse him. "I tried to find you"

"I know." When she smiled her teeth remained hidden behind her cut lips but her grey eyes still told him she was happy.

"More than once," he shrugged instinctually and regretted the small action.

"I know."

"But you… you're okay… I mean your message said you were safe?" For the first time he felt able to touch her, he grazed her soft cheek and the green and yellow blossoms of bruising.

"You did well Neville." She was always saying things like that, little genuine compliments like they were something that everyone said every day.

"The snake… I… ah." He wanted to brush away the sensation that he was exactly the same Neville Longbottom he'd always been. This was supposed to be going much smoother than this. When he'd tried to find her after the bridge with spit and gravel still in his stomach he had imagined he would be much smoother than this.

"Oh yes, the snake, the speech, of course." She tilted her head and a halo of sunlight filtered through the dishwater blonde strands of hair that escaped her braid. "You did well before that too."

Such a small thing to say and yet better than dittany. Using the silver sword as a crutch he lent forward and pulled his dented frame off the step. There was a little pleasure in the moment of confusion that passed through Luna's eyes when he turned back to her offering his hand. She took it just as she had taken it to pull him back from oncoming death in the department of mysteries and lightly raised herself to meet him. He did not let her hand go.

"You know what Luna? Right now I reckon have everything I require," he set his jaw and did what needed to be done. Something that he had got very good at since she'd left him at Christmas. "I say we try and find that room and get you some answers."

"Yes, Neville."

As they weaved through the clumps of students, professors, families and elves in the Great Hall Neville held her bruised hand, a little concerned that should he let go he might be doing so forever. As they reached the broken arched entrance he felt her pause, he stopped and turned to her questioning.

"One moment Neville there's something I think I need to do." He reluctantly let her go, watching her every light step as she slipped on to a bench beside Harry. The shorter wizard looked so very tired and grey, even against the rubble and he seemed to have a smile pinned to his face as though his brain had failed to tell his eyes. Luna spoke quietly to Harry and though Neville saw him flinch a little at her sudden presence he saw him nod and say something just as quietly in response.

"Oooh, look, a Blibbering Humdinger!" she said dreamily in a louder voice and pointed out the window, everyone around her looked up. Neville did not, instead he watched the little satisfied smile form on her lips. By the time he had focused again on the space around Luna, Harry had gone. He sank on to the benches placing the sword beside him and grabbing a piece of toast from a plate he nodded at something Terry Boot had yelled congratulatorily at him. It was a little rude to ignore the knot of people leaning in to see the sword but Neville could not help but concentrate on the little blonde figure in combat boots making her way back towards him.

"Ah! Twice baked bread." She nodded as she took the toast from his unresisting hand placed it between her teeth and tugged him upwards. Her bite taken and chewed she blinked as though his standing there was a mild annoyance, "Wasn't there something we were going to do?"

"Oh," he chuckled, "Yes, lots of things."

They got to the corridor that Neville last remembered the room to have opened into, to find the only doorway was all ash and charcoal. As if they had had the same thoughts a little intake of breath sounded from both Luna and himself. It couldn't be the same room, the very same that had taught them, provided for them and sheltered them, surely? Limping he moved between the stone piles to see inside. Luna followed a little behind. He could feel her nearby and it settled him.

"Oh, this is very sad. I thought that it might be the one place left untouched," she said as if it was merely a problem of incorrect hypothesises. Neville rounded to see her face smudged and bruised but as open as always and was surprised by the little glitter of unshed tears in her eyes.

"Bloody Hell," he sighed. "It was going to be… I was going to…" She just waited for him to finish. Neville wished for the first time that Luna might not be so understanding and patient. "But it's all just as broken and ruined as the rest, everything just… I thought it might be different now it's over… that doesn't make much sense does it?" he said sagging to the floor.

"Well," she said lyrically as she slid down beside him, "it appears you may have a head wound, perhaps you are expecting too much of yourself?"

Neville looked at her with a pang of frustration as she dabbed at the side of his head with her sleeve. Really? After all of this she still thought it was the ravings of a confunded boy. But then he saw it, the little satisfied smile, the blink and you'll miss it knowledge that other people were always underestimating Luna Lovegood. This close he felt he could breathe her in, in the ash and the charcoal, between the bruises and the blood, he pressed his lips to hers and counted all the feeling that could make you explode.

When she let go of his hair, when he slid his hand from her hip, they saw it, strangely clean and new in the broken and ruined room.

A blue toothbrush.


	2. A way of coming back

He was certain they would have stayed there until his legs had fallen asleep and he had soon followed but the way the castle started to get quieter and quieter as the sun rose in the sky had disconcerted them both. Luna adjusted her weight from the crook of his arm and looked up at him.

"Neville Longbottom, I should think there are things that we are needed for." She rocked her knees together absently as the lethargy of indecision descended on Neville for the first time in months. She lent in as she did when confiding that the room was full of wrackspurts or nargles and finished her thought as if she could read his mind, "Don't worry there will be plenty of people to tell us what to do."

People to tell him what to do. Adults with a sense of purpose and morality, for so long he'd been pretending to be one of them, holding together their little resistance and reassuring school children that Harry would be back and then they'd know for certain how to fix it. Oh, Merlin's saggy right…. It felt ridiculous now that he'd had that much faith that Harry, the guy who slept in the bed three beds down from him, the guy who was the same damn age as him was going to show up and fix everything if he could just keep everyone's morale and training up till then. But then they'd all believed. It was for the best that they had. Who could count how many would have died, would have been lost if they hadn't, but it should have crossed his mind that Harry may well have been just as lost as he had been. Since Luna had been taken from the Hogwarts Express at Christmas and then Ginny hadn't returned at Easter he'd been left alone to hold up the heavens for the rest of them.

He rolled his head back against the sooty sandstone and stared at the ceiling trying to determine its distance with no colour change to fixate on. Luna twisted her fingers into his, "You've done so well but it's okay to be done now." Her rough lips pressed in the hollow of his clavicle where his cardigan had been frayed before she stood up brushing at her purple trousers in the hope that the battle might be rubbed away. She was so small, he realised as he looked up at her otherworldly features from the floor, so easily picked up and smashed against the rocks and yet, as she held out her hands for him to balance on, so very strong.

"How did you get to be so strong?" he asked almost by accident.

"Am I so very strong?" she asked before answering her own question, "Oh I suppose in much the same way you did."

"I'm mad for you Luna," he said in a rush, in case by leaving the room he'd forget the desperate need he'd had to tell her.

"What an odd thing to say," she said placidly, "I'm not entirely sure what that means."

"It means…" he searched, he struggled, she had as always disarmed and stupefied him. "Oh, it means…" he groped. But there it was again that half smile, that glimmer in her eyes. So he kissed her and prayed that the Ravenclaw would forgive the lack of definition.

"I should speak to Professor Flitwick about staying in the Ravenclaw Tower; Hermione said that Daddy lost our house when the Death Eaters attacked it. I should stay somewhere he can find me when he's out of Azkaban."

Luna never seemed to acknowledge that he had kissed her at all. She might very well go on letting him kiss her until one day she didn't and he would never know why. Mad for her was exactly what he meant, a growing insanity from the moment she'd asked who he was so many years ago and Ginny had almost spitefully declared that he was Neville Longbottom. She terrified him, there was such a risk in Luna Lovegood. She was not firmly planted in the ground as far as he could see. How else could she have one foot in such flights of fantasy and yet see things that were so true.

She made him feel strangely blessed that she had been within reach for the last few years, an airy voice asking how his day had been or a small hand slipping pressed dirigible plums into his potions books to prevent invisible creatures from making things any worse. Without meaning to he had taken the risk. But without meaning to he had taken a lot of risks since he'd come to Hogwarts a chubby, toad loosing eleven year old.

Luna still surprised him when she skipped from the room.

Pushing his body forward he followed her yet again. They had had a plan right until Harry came back and then the plan was to follow Harry. Neville had just followed the plan. Now that the plan was done and the world was as open as the holes in the castle walls, he felt the plan should be to follow Luna, Luna at very least appeared adept at being in a world wide open.

She disappeared from view and it caught his breath in his throat. For a moment he was on platform 9 and ¾. Ginny was standing in front of him, lips fixed in grim determination, red hair swung across her face, hands on his chest and just enough pressure in those hands to hold him to the spot as Luna was pulled from the train.

Neville shook himself. He wasn't there, she wasn't gone. Moving as quickly as he could with a dodgy ankle and any number of cuts and bruises, he turned the corner and caught sight of her pale curls dancing round the next. He made a decision, there would be no battle induced madness, he would hold no truck with war related insanity. Being mad for Luna was as much madness as he was going to take.

"Oh for Merlin's sake, Luna!" he called. There was a dispirited groan and bitter mumbling from the walls as various painted figures in levels of dismay took umbrage at his cry. She was back within a moment pink cheeked under the grime. "Just… don't dash off like that okay?"

"I'm coming back," she declared.

"You've said that before," he spoke without really considering the words,"It's not the same now."

"Nor am I."

He felt his face flush with embarrassment, "No, I suppose not."

Her expression shifted from its sudden coldness to her more familiar kindness. "We are all changed Neville, but it is not necessitated that we change for the worse. It's a new day, I have a new wand and a new world to explore, those are good things. Yes?"

"Well, yes of course, I… yes."

"Good, after all we can't keep living our lives like bad things will keep happening, what kind of life would that be?"

"A bad one?" he asked, quickly made uncertain by her schooling tone.

"Something like that. Come now, Neville, you won't have lost me just because you can't see me."

"But I did," he insisted unable to prevent the childish pronouncement from escaping him. He was so very tired. "And I couldn't stop it."

"My mother always said things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect."

"You are never what I expect," he sighed.

"How very uninteresting that would be," she said simply before tucking her hand into his and tugging him forwards. Despite her reprimands she seemed to know that leaving him again would be cruel.


	3. Naturally

There were far fewer people in the great hall when they returned. Families had returned home to rejoice and mourn in equal measure. The injured had been moved on to St. Mungo's or were waiting in the infirmary for the ministrations of Madam Pomfrey.

Some of the professors and the order were still in deep conversation, centred round the end of the damaged but again inanimate head table.

Gran, he'd forgot about Gran, truth be told he had forgotten a lot of things in his desire to stay sequestered with Luna. Standing to one side of Professor McGonagall still in her barely singed vulture hat, she took him in with a single glance. All six foot of him. He dropped Luna's hand and tried to correct his posture before he consciously reminded himself that he was not in fact twelve. The little giggle that emanated not a foot from where he stood did nothing to tamp down the heat of self-consciousness.

"Neville," his Gran greeted him.

"Gran."

"Ah, Longbottom," interrupted Professor Sprout as though they were still in the green houses and something difficult needed repotting. "When we're sorted I'll need some help in the grounds dealing with the snare and the mandagora."

"Of course, Professor."

"Good Lad," she squinted at him maybe truly looking at him for the first time since the mad dash to lob dangerous botanicals at Voldemort's forces, "you should get that seen to." She gestured at his head wound.

"He will," answered Luna and his grandmother in chorus. The smooth familiar floor yet again entirely failed to open up and swallow him whole.

"Xenophilius's daughter?" his Gran regarded Luna sceptically.

"Luna, Mrs Longbottom," Luna responded unwavered by the stern Yorkshire woman.

"I've heard a great many things about you."

"Oh, that's nice" replied Luna tucking her new wand into her hair, "it's lovely to meet you but I really must speak to Professor Flitwick."

"Professor Flitwick has been directing things with the makeshift morgue, Miss Lovegood. You may find him there." Professor McGonagall barely looked up from the parchment of names she was discussing with Ministry officials.

"Thank you Professor."

His Gran's presence and her own rebuke ringing in his ears prevented him from grabbing the straggly haired witch and demanding she stay put. He knew it should have been a sense that Luna could and would look after herself or that the world was no longer as dangerous as it had been merely one day before but neither thought held him in place as much as a northern matriarch with a red handbag.

He felt Luna's absence the moment she left. Or rather her presence had been making everything bearable, manageable, and survivable. Just knowing her fingertips were not within reach of his own had brought back the throbbing in his temple, the heat to the burns on his knuckles and he could now he could enumerate every muscle by ache alone. He was staring into the space Luna had vacated when he realised he was being spoken to.

"Neville? Neville," his Gran repeated, "honestly boy, get to the infirmary, you've been there often enough in the last seven years to know the way blindfolded."

Raising her head from her paperwork Professor McGonagall added from her side, "You did well today, Mr. Longbottom, an asset to our house."

Before being swept from her company by a wave of her hand Neville heard Augusta Longbottom, former Auror, member of the Order of the Phoenix, the woman who had raised him long after her own child had been raised, mutter, "Naturally!"


	4. Infirm

Madam Pomfrey had always had a soft place in her heart for Neville Longbottom. She had chosen to express this as exasperation at the scrapes, broken bones and bloody noses he inevitably appeared with at her station. She had always been kind and patient with him never advising him to change to avoid the bullies. She called him Neville instead of Longbottom. He'd hoped he'd rewarded her kindness to the clumsy, bullied child by becoming a man who got his cuts and bruises from putting the worst of the bullies back in their boxes.

"Neville," she sighed when she saw him waiting patiently by the archway. Her apron, so usually crisp and white, was an impressionist's delight of the gore of battle. Her ashy hair peeked in humid curls from beneath her cap. "I'd wondered when I'd be seeing you; I witnessed your moment in the hall."

"Yeah, ah, more Harry's moment I think." He looked to his feet abashed,"I was, um, ordered to get this seen to."

"I should think so and more besides," she beckoned.

"No, I can wait. I'm sure there are others who need to be seen first."

"There are other healers here now, Healer Corner for one." She shook her head with some dismay, "Have you seen yourself? You look done in." Sitting him firmly on a free bed she examined his injuries. "I'll do my best with these," she said indicating the cuts to his cheeks, "But the length of time since you received them…" she tutted and it seemed to Neville that it was less her frustration with him and more with the year of inability that had lead up to it.

"You ought to stay in the infirmary overnight; a blow to the head can be tricky."

"But Gran and…." And Luna, he thought, but could not construct a sentence that encompassed exactly why he felt he should be close at hand for Luna.

"Your Grandmother will accept the advice of a registered healer." He was aware of the cool sensation of tightening across his forehead. "Wash," she ordered, "then a potion for those burns."

Neville stiffy moved to the little sink to wash his face and hands catching sight of his reflection in the mirror above it. The pink new skin on his temple and raised lines across his cheeks were not the only features that looked so unNeville like. He looked back down to the dirty water washed from his arms and face. He still did not feel clean when he turned back to the healer.

She sat him down again before she handed him the sticky yellow potion, watching him eagle eyed as he downed it. His eyelids became heavy and his limbs felt unhitched from their joints, a sleeping draught.

"No need to give me that look, half of healing is rest young man," she pronounced before pulling his legs up on to the bed and blurring into blackness.

Awake he felt a change in the room, a rustle of curtains that just wasn't right, pulling his cherry wand from beneath his pillow Neville spun beneath the sheets and took aim.

Luna was oddly pearlescent in the little light provided by the quarter moon. She was unmoving in an awkward white shift that she had clearly borrowed. Neville was used to Luna in bright colours and clashing patterns. With nothing busy to adorn her frame she was beautiful and yet not entirely Luna. Her expression was blank and Neville found himself wondering if she had merely slept walked to the infirmary.

"Luna?" he asked softly.

"I couldn't sleep," she murmured.

Pulling himself into a seated position he smirked, "Me neither, I think I got use to sleeping in a hammock." He motioned for her to sit beside him on the hospital bed but she didn't seem to recognise the request. "Luna?" he asked again.

"I couldn't sleep."

"I know, you said. Luna?" he asked, aware of the stupidity of the question forming on his lips "Are you okay?"

She moved then, silently, across the paved floor towards his bed, he noted that she was not wearing shoes and found it strangely disquieting. His Luna, wise and dotty, was a Luna who wore shoes to bed, she'd say she slept walked if asked why but would never explain why she happily traipsed around the castle barefoot in daylight. Sitting beside him she'd curled up under her borrowed night dress tucking her pale feet from sight. She reached out and stroked the side of his cheek with a single index finger.

"You'll have a scar."

"Yeah, Madam Pomfrey says it was left to long before healing it, but it will make me look like a man of action right?" he tried for humour, before taking her hand from his cheek and pressing it to his lips.

"I'm sure it will," she breathed as he let her take her hand back.

"Luna, that's twice now."

"Twice?" she echoed

"I've asked twice if you're okay and twice you've changed the subject. Now I know not every conversation with you is exactly linear but…" He didn't know how to forge ahead, before, when the worst he'd faced on a day to day basis was potions with Snape or avoiding Malfoy in the halls it hadn't been important to learn how to ask someone to talk about the things they were clearly avoiding. The small pale haired ball beside him worried him to no end. Unable to find the words he tucked her under his arm pulling her in close to his body.

"When you were gone," he said quietly into her hair, "I would pretend you'd just stepped out to the loo, you know, when the DA would meet". He could barely feel her breathing. "I think Ginny guessed, I think I said 'Oh Luna will know,' one too many times." Nothing, it was like holding a Luna duplicate the right shape and size but not Luna in all the important ways. "When you and Dean stepped through the portrait hole, well, I was pretty sure I was going to throw up with happiness."

She stirred, "No. The room was infested with Umgubular Slashkilters. People don't throw up with happiness."

Trying to keep his voice low Neville laughed with surprise and relief.

"I get scared sometimes, Neville," she whispered to his chest, the little admission shocking Neville into silence. He remembered Luna in Umbridge's office looking only bored by her capture. It was an image he had fixated on during her absence.

"Stay here," he said, "stay with me." He tilted her chin upwards so that he could see her eyes. "I get scared too"

"In the Malfoy's cellar I would tell Mr. Ollivander all about the DA. Not what we were doing or where we met just in case, but it felt good to talk about you. Like I could make you all appear just by describing your faces."

"Poor Mr. Ollivander you didn't make him listen to Seamus and Lavender's constant fighting and flirting did you, it was hard enough for us who had to be there in person." He was trying for levity but having spoken Lavender's name a dull ache settled upon him and he couldn't help but wonder how Seamus had dealt with the news.

"Oh yes, Mr. Ollivander said it was good to remember that young witches and wizards remained the same no matter what horrible things were happening in the world."


	5. Ouroboros

At some point they had lain down and continued to talk. Neville felt that most of it had been a lot of rot really. Always moving around the edges of things and avoiding the painful centres, they'd talked and talked and at some point in the long night she had fallen to sleep. It was half way through a thought and he'd considered that she was only pausing in the phrasing of it before he'd realised her grey eyes were closed and her soft features relaxed.

It was not the most comfortable of positions, the small of Luna's back pressed into his abdomen in a way that was not the most conducive to sleep in a 17 year old male. His arm was tangled beneath her so that he dare not move for fear he would wake her. Despite the heat of her body against him and the graceful curve of her neck where her hair flared away on the pillow he felt calmer than he had in days if not months. Somewhere between watching the soft breaths escaping her pink lips and the way her leg curled around his own he fell back to sleep.

It was the dawn through the large infirmary windows that woke them both. Neville's arm was asleep beneath her body but she had turned in her sleep curling into the space beneath his chin. He licked his bottom lip thoughtfully, glad that Madam Pomfrey was not standing at the end of the bed disapprovingly as he had imagined she might be when he had drifted off. What exactly he was doing with Luna Lovegood coiled sleepily around him was not a question he could answer. Not by any coherent means most certainly. He suspected that if it were not for a giant wizarding war that had tangled them both up he would not have to come up with any answer, things would proceed as he was sure such things had proceeded between witches and wizards for centuries upon centuries. Of course, he reminded himself, had that wizarding war never happened who could be sure he would be the same person he was right now. An equally confused thought struck him as hard, and who could be sure Luna would be the same person, he wasn't even sure she was the same person from one moment to the next.

Luna shifted; he looked down to find she was awake. "It's morning," she said.

"It is," he answered.

"I slept."

"We both did, for a while at least."

Neville was suddenly very aware of where his hands were and assured that he couldn't up and move them without conveying his embarrassment or some kind of insult to the girl inside of them. It wasn't like he didn't know how this sort of thing worked. The DA had got quite hormonal, to be frank, both times they'd been enlisted. But, he reflected, they were always other people's hormones, or rather other people's hormones actually achieving something. Seamus and Lavender's intensity had got, well, intense for those few weeks they were all claiming sanctuary, it had been educational and excruciating. He'd always felt not quite good enough to inflict his practice at being a teenage boy on someone else. Then, of course, there'd been a rebellion to organise and though Michael, Anthony, Ernie and Seamus seemed to think there was time for both, Neville had thought he had quiet enough to be getting on with thank you very much.

"There seems to be quite a large thought going on behind those eyes." Luna didn't blink enough when she said perceptive things. And then Luna was taken and why would he want to hold anyone else this close. "And there it goes again."

"Ah, yeah, just thinking," he coughed.

"Oh, I should move, your poor arm. You don't have to tell me the thought if you don't want to." She sat up, pulling her knees into chest and looking back over her shoulder at him.

He had a craving to pull her back down on to the bed beside him, touch her, every inch of her, verify that she was indeed real, there and happy to let him do so. He shook the urge from his mind.

"Honestly, Luna I couldn't explain it, not if I was sat here for a million years." He drew himself up to sit with her grateful that the stiffness of sleep wasn't exacerbated by a head wound and numerous bruises any longer.

"One of those thoughts? The kind that twist and turn in your mind like an ouroboros?"

"A what?" It was too early in the morning.

"Ouroboros, the symbol of the snake eating its own tail, I often find those thoughts go round and round eating themselves until you find a way to get it to cough up its tail."

"A snake, it's always a snake," he groaned.

"Or a dragon," she said kindly.

"Luna Lovegood, I could kiss you," he chuckled running his hands through his own hair in a mad attempt to look human again.

"That would be nice," she said dreamily. She could do that, could Luna, stop him in his tracks with one little utterance. Funny how the thought of Luna wanting him to kiss her made him all blank and unfocused inside. He raised an eyebrow in incredulity. She lent in and touched his lips to her own. Abruptly he focused again on the parting of her lips and the moist breath between them, the way her tongue met his and then very quickly the cough of disapproval from the once again crisp Poppy Pomfrey.

"Mr Longbottom. Miss Lovegood. It may need some repair but this is still a school and this is still my ward. Kindly disentangle yourselves. Miss Lovegood you can return to Ravenclaw Tower."

Luna slipped from his grasp as though she was made of silk, dancing across the flagstones abandoning him to his mortification.

"Right, um, Good Morning Madam Pomfrey?" he tried.

Luna reappeared like a pixie between his bed's hangings, Neville," she said smiling and little humbled by Madam Pomfrey,"You might need this."

And from somewhere about her person she produced a familiar blue toothbrush.


End file.
